


the last of his kind

by stormwarnings



Series: whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it [2]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Angst, Decapitation, Here we go, Multi, Second Kinslaying | Sack of Doriath, also NIMLOTH, eldritch peredhil ness, idk what this is but, woke up and had a lot of feelings about dior
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:55:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28484235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stormwarnings/pseuds/stormwarnings
Summary: but he is not a man. this, it is true, is evident in everything he does. perhaps luthien has chosen the mortal path, perhaps beren was born a man, but to be born half-maia, to be returned from the halls of the dead like no man ever again -dior is not a man. dior is not an elf. nobody knows what dior is. nobody ever will, not in his time. he is the last of his kind, his mother says. dior hears her say it.
Relationships: Dior Eluchíl/Nimloth of Doriath
Series: whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1868776
Comments: 10
Kudos: 21





	the last of his kind

**Author's Note:**

> back to throw this into space <33

dior eluchil is born in a green and lovely land under a dark sky and a new moon. his father says wearily, _a healthy boy. a legacy made._ his mother says wearily, _the first of his line. the last of his kind._

dior grows fast. dior’s wide eyes, always watching, and the people of this green isle do love their little lord, but he is _strange_. dior does not cry, not ever. he watches the moon like a hungry mouth, and his eyes are gleaming and dark. his teeth grow in so quickly that even the nursemaid is shocked. beren shakes his head. _a man,_ he says. _we grow like weeds._

but he is not a man. this, it is true, is evident in everything he does. perhaps luthien has chosen the mortal path, perhaps beren was born a man, but to be born half-maia, to be returned from the halls of the dead like no man will ever again -

dior is not a man. dior is not an elf. nobody knows what dior is. nobody ever will, not in his time. he is the last of his kind, his mother says. he hears her say it.

his mother sings to him at night, as he teethes on bone and viscera, and grows taller and many-eyed. his mother sings to him in her now-mortal voice, and dior hears the stories where the past and future twine together like old friends. 

dior is alone. dior is not alone. dior will be alone. present, future, past. boys left in the wood, boys found in the wood, a mother lost, a mother rescued, silver-haired beauty and dark-haired beauty and stars burning _, and dior is not so different from them, can’t he be like them -_

nimloth’s lovely silver face is familiar. he has seen her face before - or maybe it is that he will see her face again, on twin sons, on dark-haired daughters. _you are beautiful_ , she says. _why do you mourn_?

dior does not know who she speaks of. he cannot speak. he cannot find his way out of the song. he is alone. he is flying and falling, he is a wolf and he is a ghost, _he never has a choice -_

 _you are not alone,_ nimloth whispers at night. she is not afraid. perhaps that is why he loves her. or perhaps he loves her for her hunger, for her urge to change things, for her love of the quick-burning candle and the quick-changing world, so unlike her elven kin. for her lack of terror no matter the blood that drips from his eyes and his mouth. he does not know why she cares. _cannot love be enough_? she asks.

it has never been before - no, that is not true. it will never be again.

elwing, eluréd, elurín. dior restores the realm of doriath, becomes king and nimloth his silver queen, but nothing will ever make him so proud as the three little ones that bear his eyes and nimloth’s nose. ghost and gull, he sings to them. _you are stars burning, you are mouths hungering, you are beings that will never stop aching but alone you are not -_

his mother and father die, and the heralds bring him the nauglamír. around his neck it adorns, and they who see cannot deny how it shines, cannot deny how bright he shines, they say _fairest of all three races, of man and elf and maia_. they say _of all_ rather than _of none._ with the silmaril on his breast and blood in his mouth and eyes shining white like the two trees themselves in the days of his grandmother, _he is again alone -_

the kinslayers come. dior knows even before they will. dior knows his own death, though he is never given the choice of his descendants. but is there, really, a choice? it is not so simple - elf or man. dior is neither. all dior knows is this: his end.

 _this is our birthright_ , the sons of feanor tell dior. _give it here, and there will be no bloodshed._

and dior - dior laughs _._ he says, _you cannot even begin to bear it._ his blade dazzles in the light. 

dior is alone.

here is what the songs will say. _here is what the historians will not._

nimloth died with an axe in her hand, unbecoming of an elven lady, her smile fierce and her dress bloody, succumbing to her injuries surrounded by a circle of cut-apart warriors who thought they were better than she. _nimloth died thinking her sons were free, thinking oropher would spirit away her daughter with the silmaril on her head to a better life, to a happier world -_

caranthir and curufin and celegorm lay atop a pile of bodies. they three had been brought down by dior alone. celegorm’s head cut off, curufin’s heart pierced through, caranthir’s throat torn out. _dior had not used his sword for any of this. dior sang as he fought, a song that was not a song as the bards told but rather a song like the songs that made up the world before the sun and moon._

and dior’s own folk locked the doors to this room, even as all were massacred and all was lost.

dior lay in the middle of the room. dior was a king with bloody hands and a bloody mouth, _the first of his line, the last of his kind_. dior lay in the middle of the room, eyes burned out of his skull, the ground around his corpse charred _by many wings, many limbs, many eyes_. dior lay in the middle of the room.

_dior is alone._

**Author's Note:**

> rebloggable on [tumblr](https://stormwarnings.tumblr.com/post/639136671721488384/dior-eluchil-is-born-in-a-green-and-lovely-land) :)


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